Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published an article "Don't Overload Ethereum Consensus" on his blog. In the article, Vitalik says that over the years, developers/projects have come up with many ideas to use Ethereum consensus for other purposes (often in the thought experiment stage), such as the ultimate oracle, re-staking, and L1-driven L2 project recovery. The article explains why he believes that some subset of these technologies have brought a high level of systemic risk to the ecosystem.
Vitalik concludes that the social consensus of the blockchain community is fragile and should be used with caution in mature communities. Some developers try to extend the core of the blockchain with more and more features, but each such extension makes the core itself more fragile. We should be vigilant that the actions taken by application layer projects may increase the "scope" of blockchain consensus instead of verifying Ethereum's core protocol rules.
Such ideas are often conceived without considering the risks, but their consequences can easily conflict with the goals of the entire community. This process has no limiting principle, and over time, it can easily lead the blockchain community to have more and more "authorizations," pushing it towards an unsettling choice of either high-risk splits every year or allowing the realization of some formal bureaucratic organization chain to exercise final control. Instead, we should preserve the minimalist nature of the chain and help developers find alternative strategies to achieve their security goals.
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Vitalik Buterin
Ethereum
